06 March 2006 ~ 119 Comments

Water Rights in Maine

Speaking of David vs. Goliath, there is a story developing in Maine right now that deserves national attention. It involves a fight between international conglomerates and local citizens. And it has to do with an increasingly scarce resource that is essential to life – fresh water.

Jim Wilfong, former legislator, is leading the fight against Nestle and other bottled water companies operating in Maine. These companies have been buying up water rights across the state, limiting citizens’ access to their own water in the process.

Just read what happened to the town of Freyburg whose water is managed by a privately owned utility that also sells to bottled water companies (including Nestle):

[The private utility] has two pumps coming from the same spring source. In the middle of the winter two years ago, one of the pumps broke down. Guess who didn’t have water for two days and who was under an order to boil water for four more? If you guessed that that two nursing homes; the grade school, middle school and high school; and all of the households and small businesses in the village were hauling water with fire trucks and livestock trucks to keep the flushes going, you would be right.

Meanwhile, Nestlé’s trailer trucks rolled to their plant in Massachusetts 24/7 without interruption. That’s what’s coming if corporations continue to get control of our state’s water.

(read the rest of Jim’s article here)

Not only are the citizens of Maine losing a precious natural resource, they are also receiving a lower quality of service for the resources that they do retain.

In this case, the citizens are losing out to the interests of the multi-billion dollar corporation. And if nobody stands up to these corporations, they will eventually control access to most of the world’s fresh water. We need to join together to help Maine and support the citizens’ efforts. This is not just an issue in Maine – this is a national fight that directly affects all of us.

The question now is control. In Maine, we are in the fight of our lives – for our water resource, our communities, and our Maine way of life. In my view we don’t have the time or resources to fight a losing battle over whether water will be bought and sold, because it already is.

For more information about Jim Wilfong’s project, H2O for ME, visit the website (right now some of the information is dated, but it will eventually become a more interactive online community).

I’m going to continue to follow this story on my blog. This is a fight that we can’t afford to lose.

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